


the blue hour

by Caissa



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 08:01:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27700037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caissa/pseuds/Caissa
Summary: Florence, after the fall.
Relationships: Bedelia Du Maurier/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 8
Kudos: 43
Collections: electric-couple prompts





	the blue hour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NotPersephone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotPersephone/gifts).



Bedelia scans the piazza with fondness and not a little trepidation. It is the first time she has returned to Florence since her _last_ first time with him, with Hannibal. The Piazza San Michelangelo is the same as it ever was, same boisterous crowd of tourists from all corners of the globe, same carnival of street performers and gelato vendors. It’s warm for March, a touch humid, and so she feels no chill even as the sun begins to go down. Orange and mauve paint the white marble of the Duomo, as picture perfect as a postcard. As perfect as her memories of her time here, preserved in amber and shared with no one.

She waves at a passing waiter and takes her seat at the small unpretentious outdoor trattoria. He brings her a green glass bottle of Pellegrino, but she can’t bring herself to drink it. The bubbles will not mix well with the flurry of butterflies in her stomach. Unwilling to order, she picks nervously at the bread left at the table, rendering it into miniscule pieces. Truly she could not remember the last time she had been this nervous—or vulnerable.

She once said that a moment is ascribed to a decision, but her presence here was a journey years in the making, with many twists and turns, chutes and ladders along the way.

“Will someone be joining you, signora?” the waiter asks, gently prodding.

“I really don’t know,” she tells him honestly. “Could you leave the menu for now?”

His expression is nonplussed, as if middle-aged women unsure of whether or not they will be joined for dinner is an everyday occurrence at this restaurant and not an extreme oddity. “As you wish,” he says with a small bend at the waist.

“As I wish,” Bedelia whispers to herself, scanning the crowd, afraid to see and afraid not to. “As I wish.”

*

She’s nestled in his arms, snuggled tight against the winter chill, a soft downy duvet draped across them both, though Hannibal never seems to mind the cold. He is bare-chested, his skin a flush and warm human radiator underneath her palms. They are watching a movie together of all things— _a movie_. It’s a bizarre island of domestic tranquility in the inferno they’ve created for themselves. She can’t say it’s unwelcome.

The film has ended, _An Affair to Remember_ , one of the few options showing in English on Italian television for Valentine’s Day.

“I liked it. A bit melodramatic at the end—so much trouble could have been saved if they had only talked to one another,” he tells her, hands ruffling through her hair. There is a pointed critique in there, for her perhaps.

“It’s one of my favorites. I’ve always liked Cary Grant,” she says, turning up to look at him. “You remind me of him a little.”

“Really? How so?” Hannibal’s baritone rumbles below her and she can tell he is flattered by the comparison.

“I suppose you both have the same kind of debonair charm. A certain grace,” she says. A half-truth. Cary Grant had enjoyed men, too, and she is trying very hard not to let her jealousy of Will Graham pierce this unexpected bubble of happiness in which she finds herself.

If Hannibal has understood the subtext of her words, he does not acknowledge it. “I am surprised to hear you like this kind of film. You are something of a closet romantic, Doctor.”

Once she would have protested, but she is too wrapped in the moment, in the comfort and warmth of him like this, to break the spell. “Perhaps,” she says, her best Mona Lisa smile written upon her lips.

Something in Hannibal’s manner turns from playful to somber on a dime. “The characters in the film—they fall in love but they are not free. They agree to meet again if they still find themselves in love at the top of the Empire State Building.” His voice quavers. “It’s a nice idea.”

No remark from Hannibal is ever casual. She pulls herself up on her elbows so she can look him in those dark chocolate irises of his. “What are you suggesting?”

“You and I…we are not quite free either, are we?”

_I am not the one in love with another_ a brittle part in her protests, shards off it threatening to cut through her own immaculately lacquered armor. “As long as you are determined to see this…business…through with Will Graham and the FBI, no you are not. And possibly will be even less free in time.”

His eyes drift away and for the first time she sees him look just the slightest bit apprehensive of the trap he has deliberately sprung. His arms squeeze around her tighter, biceps rippling like a python. “It could be any day now. Weeks rather than months. I think it will be soon.”

A pause. His hand closes over hers, the one wearing the diamond. There is something of a promise in the gesture, more than when he had playfully placed it on her finger nearly a year ago. “I find myself wishing for more time,” he says.

An almost obscene bark of laughter threatens to erupt from behind her tightly shut lips. “What do you suggest—that we meet at the top of the Duomo in a year’s time to rekindle our love affair?”

“Not the Duomo—it’s such a long wait to the top. The Piazza San Michelangelo would be better. It has the best view of the city.” A beat. “Perhaps make it five years’ time.”

“You could find yourself a guest of Frederick Chilton for considerably longer than that.”

“I most certainly hope not,” he scoffs. “Five years’ from now on the first day of spring—”

“La Primavera. Your favorite.”

He snuggles her close and whispers, “What does the secret romantic inside you say, Bedelia?”

He’s dead serious. It may be the most insane thing she has ever heard from him. It would be absolutely psychotic to agree. But five years is a long time, and there is a chance that neither of them may survive the next five days.

“All right.”

*

The bubbles in her Pellegrino have turned flat and the sun has set on Florence. The evening star has come out and the sky glows a bright cobalt. The time of day the French call “l’heure bleue” when it is neither completely light nor completely dark.

Hannibal had told her that once. And Hannibal at the moment is nowhere to be found.

The disappointment hits her hard and heavy. She had swallowed so much of her pride to come here. For five long years without him she had searched her heart and had come to the conclusion that there could be no other choice. Life after Florence had been a dull black and white compared to the Technicolor world she had once shared with him. No matter where she went or how pleasant the company, nothing compared to that year in Florence.

Bedelia didn’t know what was worse—the idea that he had fallen out of love with her, had found a _new_ love, or the very likely reality that he was dead.

She had wanted more time, too.

Bedelia dabs at the corner of her eye with the starched cloth napkin, mascara streaking black against the bleached white. _Damn_. She was _not_ going to cry in public—the final indignity after everything he had put her through. Best to pay her bill and leave as quickly as possible.

Before she has a chance to signal for the waiter, he has appeared, bearing a tall orange-colored drink. “For you, signora,” he says.

“I didn’t order this,” Bedelia replies.

“From the gentleman at the bar. He wishes you to have it.”

Bedelia is about to tell the waiter she will not be accepting any drinks from strangers when she locks eyes with a man in a well-cut white suit wearing a matching fedora. He doffs his hat at her and Bedelia’s heart leaps into her throat. For a moment, time dilates, and she can number her own heartbeats. She nods back and raises her glass, inclining her head that he should join her.

Hannibal saunters across the piazza with that same familiar feline grace. His hair is more salt than pepper and his skin is tanned. He looks well-fed and rested, like he’s just come back from a very relaxing holiday.

He takes the seat opposite her. For a moment they simply look at one another, each drinking the other in. She wonders what he sees in her, if he finds the lines near her eyes charming or simply a sign she is getting old.

“You came,” Hannibal says. “A not-so-closet romantic after all.”

Bedelia chooses her words with care, as she always did with him. It returns to her almost like a muscle memory. “Am I to take it that you are more free now than you were five years ago?”

“In more ways than one.” He looks at her soberly. “Will Graham and I parted ways somewhere south of Havana.”

“How so?”

“We found ourselves to be incompatible, each of us wanting more than the other could give. It was unsustainable.” He looks at her intently. “I suppose you always knew that.”

“I don’t want to be your ‘rebound’ Hannibal—certainly not a second time.”

“You aren’t—you won’t be. That was nearly two years ago. I needed to be sure.”

She nods slowly and takes a sip of the drink for courage. The dry and sweet taste of the drink is familiar from her time here. “Aperol spritz,” she says, “Thank you.”

He inspects his own, wryly. “I’ve always found the color unfortunate.”

“If I recall correctly, this establishment serves theirs from a can.”

“Well, needs must.”

“When the devil drives,” Bedelia says, finishing the aphorism. Hannibal chuckles a little, easy and familiar. It wounds her in some way—an arrow through the heart, the ache of how much she has missed him.

“Aperol is an _apéritif_ , served at the beginning of the meal to stimulate the appetite.” The timbre of his voice is slow and seductive and his eyes look at her with no small amount of lust, kindling a spark she had begun to think extinguished for good. “Tell me, Bedelia, are you hungry?”

She wants to laugh at his almost obscene innuendos. “I’m here, Hannibal. Doesn’t that tell you enough?”

“And is your heart free?”

“It was free the last time.”

He covers her small hands with his and she is shocked by the warmth of them. “No, it was not. My heart may have belonged to another, but yours, _yours_ belonged to yourself. You kept it stowed away, under lock and key somewhere, in a place I could not reach.”

Tears spring to her eyes for the second time that night. “Can you blame me?” she chokes out.

He is there in an instant, bridging the gap and the years between them, sweeping her up in his arms and holding her close, as if it is the last reel of the film and he is the leading man. She does not need an orchestra swelling around them to feel the depth of the emotion in this embrace. He rocks her like a child, stroking her hair, and she sobs a bit against his fine linen suit. His cologne is different and his frame a tad thinner, but his arms around her feel like home all the same.

They break their embrace and Hannibal dabs at her tears with his own blue silk handkerchief. His eyes are misty, too, but underneath his tears he is smiling, the sun through the rain. “So, shall we eat? They make a passable _cacio e pepe_ here if you are desperate. Or, of course, I could cook for you.”

“What would you make for me?” she asks, testing these new waters with him.

“Whatever you wish,” he says, planting a kiss at her temple while slipping an arm around her waist. “From now on, whatever you wish.”

“I do believe I am hungry after all.” She perches on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear, a hot coquettish breath. “And an _apéritif_ is not necessary. I’ve had five years of anticipation.”

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday to my partner in crime, Bedeliainwonderland! You deserve so much more, and I am feeling a bit rusty and out of practice, but your love of this ship always keeps me coming back to them. 
> 
> I always kind of wondered if there was some offscreen bargain between Bedelia and Hannibal in "Dolce" we never got to see.


End file.
